SNDA's AION review – part 5. How will the game do?

One can find part 4 of my review on AION here:

http://chinese-net-gaming-stock.blogspot.com/2009/06/sndas-aion-review-part-4-hack.html

First, I will list the weakness of the game below.

The graphics in this game is top notch. There is really no complaining of this game graphically. But this game was advertised in China as the most technically advanced game in the world. But this game is definitely not the state of the art in terms of graphics. From the following picture, one can see that this game is based on the modified CryEngine 1 game engine. But games using the newer generation CryEngine 2 are out already.

A game using CryEngine 2 will probably be beyond the capability for most of Chinese player’s computers. But on the other hand, I wonder what would happen when Chinese players find out that this game is not the most technically advanced game.

The second thing that might hold this game back is its competition. WOW’s new expansion pact is going to be out pretty soon. I will assume that NTES will start operating WOW in June/June this year. It will probably get its new expansion pact out a couple of months after that. That could be a very dangerous time for AION. I am certain a lot of players will go back to WOW.

In addition, this game is not expected to be very popular in the west. WOW is still expected to be the overwhelmingly dominating game in the west. For average Chinese players, do they want to play a “western” theme game made by a western company and is number 1 in the west, or do they want to stick with a “western” theme game made by a Korean company and is a bit player in the west?

One reason WOW is so popular in China is because it can be a bragging right for average Chinese playing the best game in the world. To most Chinese, the best game means the number 1 game in the west.

There was a “cool” factor in playing WOW. Now, it is cool to play AION. But after the new expansion pact is released and as it becomes clear that AION won’t be popular in the West, the cool game will be back to WOW.

The third thing that might limit the popularity of this game is that this game is not as relationship based as some other popular Chinese games. For example, the craft system is extremely simple. There is really not that much fun to do crafting. That makes this game a combat dominated game.

The castle siege can happen many times. It means it would be impossible to hold a castle for any long period of time. If an opponent really wants to take your castle, he would just attack you at the most inappropriate time (2AM). Since nobody can hold castle, clans won’t try to grow by taking over more and more territory.

Therefore, there are little emotional attachment to any territory, it is easy for clan to go some places else (like another game).

In addition, because clans are not going to be able to hold a castle for long, they are not going to spend money and resources to improve its defense. Therefore, Castle warfare is purely depends on which side has more troupes. There is no strategy involved.

That leaves free-roaming PvP. Well, what's there to say? You run around, you kill people, people run to guards, people bring friends, you run, come back, kill more people. Not much more to say honestly. No complaints but nothing that immediately stands out as amazing. Just more abyss points and sometimes some pretty epic skirmishes.

Therefore, what we have is a game that is not strong on relationships, but is designed to be strong on combat, except the combat is not as fun as it could be.

Do I feel this is a big problem? It might not be. I think NCSoft will keep on introducing more combat options. Even though combat can be lacking right now, but I think it is something that will probably be fixed in the not too distant future.

The biggest reason that will limit the popularity of this game is NCSoft’s inability to control bot players. NCSoft had a history of having trouble with bots. After one month of operation of Aion, it is clear that they will have problem with bots in this game as well.

No matter what they do with GameGuard, bot makers would break the code and provide work around in no time. Most of the bots won’t be controlled by regular players. Most of the bots will be controlled by gold farming companies. For those companies, it is how they make their living. They are not going away.

But does this mean AION is doomed in China? No not at all. I honestly believe that Chinese players are a lot more tolerant of bots than their western counterpart. They don’t like it, but they will tolerate it.

Another important thing to remember is that these bots makers have to pay money to SNDA and NCSoft just regular players. As long as SNDA can keep bots under levels tolerable by the regular players, it is making money from both the regular player and from bots.

In the final analysis, if one defines a mega hit as a game that can achieve a PCU of 500k, I think AION is good enough game to become a mega hit. It is just a wonderful game to play.

On the other hand, because of the weaknesses I addressed above, it will definitely not achieve the level of success WOW will achieve. In summary, I think AION will be a mega hit. But it will encounter strong limit and it will be hard for it to become 1 million (PCU) player game.

SNDA make it virtually impossible to track server statistics. Unlike NTES or SOHU, where they allow players to know exactly how busy all the servers are, SNDA is on another extreme. SNDA won’t even let you know how busy the server you are on is. I don’t understand why SNDA is doing this. SNDA makes it virtually impossible for people to know the health of any of its games. I have absolutely no idea how many people is currently playing this game. I can’t even provide an estimate.

Finally, AION is the first successful game in the last 2 to 3 years that uses the paying game model. It is also the most expansive paying game in China right now. The fact that it is so successful indicates that paying game (or time based) model is still workable as long as the game is good.

SNDA's AION review – part 4. Hack

One can find part 3 of my review on AION here:

http://chinese-net-gaming-stock.blogspot.com/2009/06/sndas-aion-review-part-3-bot-bot-more.html

If bot is not bad enough, we now have hack. More specifically, there is now speed attack hack. From the following link:

http://aion.sdo.com/web3/news/news_content.asp?channel=1&id=2865&CategoryID=1001

SNDA will pay $800k rmb to whoever gives them information of the speed attack bot maker.

What is Speed attack hack? There is actually video of this particular hack, see the following:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVST7QBlwS8

In the above video, at the 10 second mark, the female fighter dish out 7 or 8 attack skills at the same time. At about the same amount of time for a normal player to dish out 1 attack skill, she is able to dish out 7 or 8 skills, there is no way anybody can survive her attack for more than 3 seconds.

This of course completely destroys the game balance.

Personally, I think this problem will eventually be solved. No game is perfect. As long as NCSoft is willing to continue updating its game, it will be fine.

Now, a couple of more in-game picture:

SNDA's AION review – part 3. Bot, Bot, more bots

One can find part 2 of my review on AION here:

http://chinese-net-gaming-stock.blogspot.com/2009/06/sndas-aion-review-part-2-strengths-of.html

Bots are automatic programs that a user can use to control an in-game character without the user’s presence. Why would one use bots?

A regular user can use bot to level up fast. One has to eat and sleep some times. When he is away, he could use bot to kill monsters and gather experience, etc. But regular users are not really the main culprit. The ones that are impossible to block are the profession gold farmers. If somebody wants to farm gold, he could just have his computer running 10 bots and having all ten of them killing monsters and collect in-game items and experience points. He then sells them to regular players for real money.

Bots are bad. They don’t interact with normal user. It might take items from you after you killed a monster. An area with lots of bots can give one a feeling of a town full of zombies. Worse of all, a game with a lot of bots can cause severe inflation of in-game economy.

Bots were everywhere. There were the times when you cannot go to any land area outside the abyss without seeing bots dominating everything in sight. Bots in chains are so easy to spot too, they have targets on mobs before they appear on screen, they almost always have blue gear or are 5+ levels above the monsters they are killing, they get stuck on the most basic terrain obstructions any normal player would jump over.

The worst part about it is you could be killing a monster, have it down to like 40% health, then they come and start attack and somehow get the kill reward and loot.

I even found one stuck in a tree trying to kill monsters. I left and came back two hours later and the same bot was still stuck in the same tree.

The following is a video where 3 bots got together to farm gold:

http://media.17173.com/aion/zt/aionwg.shtml

On 4/29/2009, SNDA updated the servers with "GameGuard" an anti-botting program. After that, it definitely helps. A lot of bots are gone. But a week later, a lot of bots come back.

Out of three servers that I have access to, one is full of bots while two others have very few bots (they are there, just very few).

But what is nProtect GameGuard? nProtect GameGuard is an anti-cheating rootkit developed by INCA Internet. It is installed alongside many Asian massively multiplayer online roleplaying games (MMORPGs)s such as AION, Lineage II, 9Dragons, Cabal Online, Phantasy and Ragnarok Online to block malicious applications and common methods of cheating.

Many hackers attempt to find ways to compromise GameGuard in new ways. nProtect GameGuard constantly updates itself and provides new protection against the latest threats. Even though it boasts such effectiveness, but hackers can break or bypass GameGuard faster than it gets updated. Thus, it renders the system quite useless, especially from the number of sites out there utilizing 'bot' programs to flood the game to farm the in-game currency & rare items, which are then sold for real money. Such sites and 'bots' have been known to be up and running again, having bypassed GameGuard, within an hour of its latest update.

In Lineage II, Cabal Online and Ragnarok Online, GameGuard is usually bypassed in a matter of hours after an update. In 9Dragons situation was ever worse - in spite of GameGuard's constant updates, Vietnam players continued to hack the game which resulted in the blocking all of Vietnam IPs.

On some games such as MapleStory, the game itself does a hash check of the GameGuard revision currently running and will exit if it does not match the hash on the server side.[citation needed] This is a security measure from nProtect GameGuard to ensure that GameGuard has not been hacked and nProtect GameGuard should update to the latest version under normal circumstances. But it can be easily compromised with packet software, such as Russian PacketHack which is designed for packet interception and hacking on net-driver level.

NCSoft’s game always have trouble with bots. The possibility that AION will be bot free is very low. Therefore, the question is not whether it can remove the problem. The question is really if NCSoft and SNDA can manage its bot problem and minimize its impact.

Now, a few more pictures:

SNDA’s AION review – part 2. Strengths of the game

One can find part 1 of my review on AION here:
http://chinese-net-gaming-stock.blogspot.com/2009/06/sndas-aion-review-part-1-game-basics.html

Overall, I will list the strength of the game below.

Graphically, this game is definitely the most beautiful game on the market today as far as I know (I could be wrong here because I am not a big gamer). In addition, this beauty can be played by players with only medium level computers. Any reasonable 3 years old computers can play this game with no problems. This is very important in China because a lot of Chinese players still have computers that is not quite on par with those in the States. This juggling act is extremely difficult to pull off. NCSoft pulled it off.

NCSoft pull it off by using an older generation of game engine. It also cut some corners by modeling the terrain using very little polys. But that is ok.

The sound and music of this game is very well done. The story line is epic and the quests and missions fit the story line well. While the missions and quests themselves are not ground breaking, the overall story make going through the missions and quests enjoyable.

When a player starts to play this game, the overall design of this game will get the players through the levels. It will be a very enjoyable experience for the players to level up. By the time the players become high level players, hopefully, they will start to join a clan and start the relationship part of the game. When they start to make friends, these players start to become long time players rather than just 2 or 3 months players.

There are also 2 unique features that are not available to other games. The first unique feature is the PvPvE. By introducing a third computer controlled race, it definitely adds more uncertainty to the game. The other unique feature is the flying part. Even though there is no flight specific combat system, I am sure users will figure out ways to take advantage of it. It definitely introduces something different.

Overall, as a gamer, I would call this game a very addictive and intoxicating game. SNDA had done a masterful job in marketing this game. Every Chinese game player knew of this game. This game is highly anticipated in China. This game is going to become a blockbuster in no time. But can this game last?

Finally, let me show more pictures of the game: